UN committee: Brexit rhetoric fueled hate crime

U.K. politicians contributed to the spike in hate crime around the time of the June vote to leave the EU, according to the U.N.’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

The campaign ahead of the June 23 referendum was marked by “divisive, anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric,” the committee concluded at a meeting on August 18. It added that prominent political figures had “failed to condemn [racist abuse] and created and entrenched prejudices.”

In the period June 16 to 30, some 3,198 hate crimes were reported, a rise of 42 percent compared to 2015, according to the BBC.

British Transport Police (BTP) recorded 119 allegations of hate crime in the two weeks after the referendum, up 78 percent on the same period last year.

“The gap between reported cases and successful prosecution remains significant,” the committee found. “As a result, a large number of racist hate crimes seem to go unpunished.”

The Polish embassy in London expressed concern at “incidents of xenophobic abuse” following an attack against a Polish community center in the capital a few days after the vote.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said in the days following the decision to leave the bloc that there would be a “zero tolerance” approach to xenophobic attacks.

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Fred

Has anyone figured out what the “hate crime” graffiti on the Polish community centre actually meant? The idea that British racists have opinions on obscure Polish think-tanks or even more obscure Polish monarchist organisations seemed a little odd.

Posted on 8/26/16 | 6:30 PM CET

Tom Cullem

And we all know how unbiased the UN is toward those rejecting “internationalism” as a religion . . . they’re going to get increasingly desperate as resistance to the EU mounts in The Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, etc., and the earth doesn’t open and swallow Little England, and they have to keep digging frantically for really big things to blame on BREXIT . . .

Posted on 8/26/16 | 7:34 PM CET

Latimer Alder

3,198 ‘hate crimes’ among a population of 65 million does not strike me as an epidemic.

For every 20,000 folks in UK, 19,999 were not ‘hate crime victims’

Posted on 8/27/16 | 2:52 AM CET

Latimer Alder

‘The gap between reported cases and successful prosecution remains significant,” the committee found. “As a result, a large number of racist hate crimes seem to go unpunished.”

Yep. We call it ‘evidence’.

The only criterion to report ‘hate crime’ is that somebody thought that an incident may have been a crime and that they thought it might be ‘hate-related’

Once investigated many of the reports fail on the first hurdle.

Posted on 8/27/16 | 2:56 AM CET

Alan

@Latimer

And a substantial number of those who thought something may be ‘hate- related- are probably ‘behalfers’ whinging from their armchairs miles away from & days after the alleged event!

Mind you, MVU & Fier had better watch out just in case anyone takes some of their rantings seriously – unlikely I admit

Posted on 8/27/16 | 11:46 AM CET

Fat Bob

Or maybe the subjective nature of “hate crime” reporting and the organised facebook campaign to report anything as a hate crime under that criteria is the real story here.

Given the above, we actually have no idea how much real hate crime has actually risen.